How Charity Law Enables State-Backed Religious Misogyny

By Megan Manson, Head of Campaigns, National Secular Society

Rape is caused by women dressing sexily.
It’s acceptable to beat your wife if she challenges your authority.
Society would be better if women accepted their role as subordinate to men.
FGM isn’t harmful if done with moderation.

They sound like statements from the dark niches of the incel movement. But they are all views which have been promoted or signposted by registered charities in the UK.

How can this be? Charities are meant to provide a public benefit, in exchange for the generous tax breaks they’re granted. They’re also prohibited from promoting extremism or causing harm. Most people would recognise advancing such horrifically misogynistic views is harmful. So what’s going on?

The answer lies in what these charities have in common: they’re all registered under the charitable purpose of ‘the advancement of religion’.

When we think of religious charities, we may think of The Trussell Trust, YMCA or Tearfund. These are all charities which do commendable work, often by members who are strongly motivated by their religious faith.

But they are not representative of the majority of religious charities.

Few people know that a religious organisation doesn’t need to be doing work that would be considered a ‘public benefit’ by the average person – helping the poor, for example. Because “the advancement of religion” is one of the ‘heads of charity’ recognised in law, an organisation only needs to promote a religious ideology in order to be meet the criteria of serving a charitable purpose. It may be the charity exists solely to publish religious literature, or broadcast religious messages, or recruit other people to the religion, and nothing else. As long as it meets a few other technical requirements, it can acquire the much-coveted registered charity status, with all the tax benefits and public trust this brings, relatively easily.

You may see the problem already. Not everyone follows a religion – in fact, 37% of people in England and Wales have no religion, according to the Census. How does existing to promote a religious agenda benefit those people?

There is a more serious problem. Many of the ideologies promoted by religion are regressive and corrosive to liberal values of equality, tolerance and human rights.

There’s no getting round the fact that most, if not all, of the world’s major religions are patriarchal and actively work to uphold patriarchy. Female subordination is baked into their ideology. And if our law recognises institutions as charities simply for advancing religion, they will inevitably recognise charities which promote sexism, misogyny and male supremacism.

We see examples of such charities all the time.

In 2021 a Christian charity called Horemow Europe registered with the Charity Commission (the charity regulator for England and Wales). Its website included a blog which said women wear trousers to “get the opposite sex aroused as they view the shape of her private part”. It also published a leaflet saying women who “look sexy” are a “strong contributor” to rape.

Another Christian charity, Moray Coast Baptist Church, registered this August with OSCR (Scotland’s charity regulator). A sermon on its website by its pastor said the "primary function" of a woman is "to be married, to have children, and to tend to household affairs – the cooking, the cleaning, the washing up". He added: "Society would be a lot better if women would submit to their husbands and tend to their children and take care of their home. The world wouldn't be in the mess that it is in today if that were the case."

And in December 2021 the Charity Commission registered an Islamic charity, Utrujj Foundation, which published an article by one of the charity’s trustees advising that a man "has the permission to 'strike'" his wife as part of "a process to salvage a marriage".

Unfortunately, condoning violence against women is a widespread problem in Islamic charities. One which registered in 2020 had a lecture on its website entitled "The Right to Beat Wives" which said it is acceptable for a husband to "punish" his wife if she challenges his authority, provided it does not "leave any sign of wound" on her. We’ve even found examples of older Islamic charities signposting material which condones FGM.

In 2023, I am sure more religious charities will register which openly promote sexist ideologies. It seems there is little the regulators can do to stop them while advancing religion remains a charitable purpose in law.

This needs to change. Because charities are granted tax breaks, and because registered charitable status amounts to a recognition that an institution provides a public benefit, what we’re seeing is state-endorsed, state-funded misogyny.

If these charities were not religious, they would be far less likely to get away with promoting these views. ‘The advancement of religion’ charity head enables them. That’s why it needs to be removed from the list of charitable purposes.

This would not prevent religious charities which do genuine good work from registering; they can simply register under other charitable purposes. Indeed, the Trussell Trust isn’t registered under ‘the advancement of religion’ at all. This doesn’t prevent it from working with churches across the country to run much-needed food banks.

But removing ‘the advancement of religion’ as a charitable purpose would stop fundamentalist religious groups from exploiting our charity sector in their goal to prop up patriarchy and keep women under their heel.

For more information, please see the National Secular Society’s campaign to reform charity law.